DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61894#0322
292
CLASSICAL TOUR
Ch. IX.
in breadth and thirty in length, with mud and in-
fection. The loss of so much fertile land, and
the exhalations arising from such a vast tract of
swamp, carried, not unfrequently to the Capital
itself by southerly winds, must have attracted the
attention of a people so active and industrious as
the ancient Romans.
Appius Claudius, about three hundred years
before the Christian era, when employed in car-
rying his celebrated road across these marshes,
made the first attempt to drain them, and his ex-
ample was, at long intervals, followed by various
consuls, emperors, and kings, down to the Gothic
Theodoric inclusively. The wars that followed
the death of this prince, the devastation of Italy,
and the weakness and unsettled state of the Ro-
man government, withdrew its attention from
cultivation and left the waters of the Paludes to
their natural operation. The Popes, however,
when their sovereignty was established and their
attention no longer distracted by the piratical
visits of distant or the inroads of neighboring bar-
barians, turned their thoughts to the amelioration
of the inundated territory; and we find accord-
ingly that from Boniface VIII. down to the late
pontiff Pius VI. no less than fifteen Popes have
attempted this grand undertaking, Most of these
CLASSICAL TOUR
Ch. IX.
in breadth and thirty in length, with mud and in-
fection. The loss of so much fertile land, and
the exhalations arising from such a vast tract of
swamp, carried, not unfrequently to the Capital
itself by southerly winds, must have attracted the
attention of a people so active and industrious as
the ancient Romans.
Appius Claudius, about three hundred years
before the Christian era, when employed in car-
rying his celebrated road across these marshes,
made the first attempt to drain them, and his ex-
ample was, at long intervals, followed by various
consuls, emperors, and kings, down to the Gothic
Theodoric inclusively. The wars that followed
the death of this prince, the devastation of Italy,
and the weakness and unsettled state of the Ro-
man government, withdrew its attention from
cultivation and left the waters of the Paludes to
their natural operation. The Popes, however,
when their sovereignty was established and their
attention no longer distracted by the piratical
visits of distant or the inroads of neighboring bar-
barians, turned their thoughts to the amelioration
of the inundated territory; and we find accord-
ingly that from Boniface VIII. down to the late
pontiff Pius VI. no less than fifteen Popes have
attempted this grand undertaking, Most of these